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Trinity Renewed: Keller Links Health of Episcopal Church to Community

5 min read

He may only be “interim” dean and rector of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Little Rock, but the Rev. Christoph Keller III has no intention of being a place holder.

When he took office six months ago, Keller told Little Rock developer Rett Tucker, a longtime church member who helped recruit Keller, that he intended to be an “energetic interim.” To that end, Keller has launched an effort to reinvigorate the cathedral, which will mark the 130th anniversary of its downtown founding on Oct. 30.

He has committed to serving the cathedral for two years.

Keller links the redevelopment of the cathedral and the redevelopment of downtown.

“There are two different kinds of redevelopment going on,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s the redevelopment of downtown, of which the cathedral is a part, and there’s also a redevelopment and kind of a turnaround effort going on at the cathedral. I think that they are mutually reinforcing in a small way.”

Keller, who in his interim role replaced the Rev. Jonathon Jensen, who left for a church in Pittsburgh, sees Little Rock as a city “on the rise.” It’s a circumstance that gives the church an opportunity to expand its reach into the community.

In taking on his new position at Trinity, Keller saw three main needs: financial, programmatic and administrative.

“My assessment was that there were three things that needed to happen,” Keller said. “One was, financially, we needed to come out of the hole. That was more of a morale problem really than it was a money problem.”

And that problem, he said, has been addressed.

In addition, “there’s a program deficit,” Keller said. “We weren’t doing near what we could do, what we have the capability of doing for a church of this size as far as offering programs to our members and to the community.”

To help address that need, Keller is offering a 12-week lecture and discussion series, “Christian Faith and Modern Science,” which begins Sunday, Sept. 7. That’s “Rally Day” at the cathedral, when a number of new services and programs begin in an effort to reach out not only to parishioners but to the central Arkansas community.

Finally, “there’s kind of an organizational, administrative problem,” Keller said. Keller’s father, Christoph Keller Jr., was also an Episcopal priest, rising to lead the Diocese of Arkansas of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. Before he entered the priesthood, however, Keller’s father learned a little something about administration and management as an executive at Murphy Oil Corp. of El Dorado. Keller explained:

“Clergy would come in and say, ‘Bishop, I just don’t believe in administration. That’s not one of my gifts.’ And he’d say, ‘Well, you’re going to have to pay attention to it because while administration is not one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it’s the delivery system for all of them.’ And so Episcopal churches tend to organize around the pastor. That works well in a small church, but it doesn’t work well in a big and complicated church like a cathedral.”

At the end of his tenure at Trinity, Keller said, he wants to be able to say that he instituted organizational structures and processes to handle issues like long-range planning.

Keller and Tucker visited recently with a reporter at the church, located at 310 W. 17th St. in the Governor’s Mansion Historic District. Finding two men with deeper roots in Arkansas wouldn’t be easy.

Christoph Keller Jr., Keller’s father, was the son and grandson of Episcopal priests. He married Caroline Murphy of the Murphy Oil family in 1940, served in the Marine Corps during World War II and went on to become Murphy Oil’s first executive vice president in 1951. He left the business world to study for the priesthood, eventually becoming bishop of the Diocese of Arkansas in 1970.

The Rev. Christoph Keller III, who has a Doctor of Theology, started St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in 1991, conducting services in a bargain movie theater until the church building on Chenal Parkway was completed.

The Keller family donated $3.5 million toward what became the Polly Murphy & Christoph Keller Jr. Education Center on the campus of Heifer International.

Tucker is a principal in Moses Tucker Real Estate, responsible for much of downtown redevelopment, including the River Market District.

His father, Everett Tucker Jr., was industrial director of the Chamber of Commerce and a moderate leader in the Central High desegregation crisis.

And Rett Tucker is a fourth-generation member of the cathedral, has served three times on the vestry and served one year as senior warden. His grandchildren are now members.

“The mission of our company is to strengthen the urban core,” Tucker said of Moses Tucker. “Philosophically, we believe that downtown is the heart of the city. And if your heart’s not healthy, generally the rest of your body is not going to be very healthy. So our company has been about redeveloping, rebuilding downtown Little Rock, largely in the River Market District.”

The cathedral, Keller said, is “the heart of the diocese. And so it has to flourish. It has to be a resource for its city and for its diocese.”

Three years ago, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral went through a wrenching time when, after almost 55 years, it was forced to close its Cathedral School, which taught children from prekindergarten through the fifth grade. The opening in 2009 of a grade school at Episcopal Collegiate School had caused enrollment at the Cathedral School to plummet. Closing of the beloved school led to a drop in membership at the church. That has stabilized, however, and it now has about 1,000 members from all over central Arkansas.

Tucker said Trinity had put that episode behind it: “Chris, what he’s done in six months here is really nothing short of phenomenal. … He has really rallied the parish.”

Keller noted that the cathedral had a number of programs that helps connect it to the community, citing its early childhood education program, which has an enrollment of about 100.

He also cited arts programs such as a performance by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra at the cathedral in May and Wildwood Academy for Music & the Arts’ Out & About Series of concerts at Trinity this summer.

In addition, a charter school, Little Rock Preparatory Academy, is renting from Trinity the facilities of the former Cathedral School at 1616 S. Spring St. Keller said the cathedral is exploring sponsoring an arts outreach program for the academy.

Ultimately, Keller said of his goals for the cathedral, “I think getting pointed in the right direction is what we’re up to. The plan for the cathedral is to get wind in its sails and move into the future.”

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